Naetha
Fledgling Freddie
- Joined
- Dec 22, 2003
- Messages
- 1,564
This may seem like a simple thing to do, but a lot of people have been having trouble recently getting artifact/levelling/RvR groups together recently, so I thought I'd just put up a quick guide about how to form a good group.
1) Have an objective. What do you want to do? RvR? PvE? You need to be specific - say you want to get a group together to get artifact X in XX zone.
2) Have a timescale. Do you know how long this is going to take, or how long you're going to be doing this for? People don't like to commit for unspecified amounts of time, so you're more likely to get people if you say it will take about half an hour, or you want to get an RvR group going for a couple of hours. Don't underestimate how long it takes either - if you tell everyone it will take 10 minutes and it actually takes half an hour you'll annoy people.
3) Set a time and place to do something specific - it gives people online notice that you want to do something, and also informs people that have just logged on what is going on. Either make regular announcements on /gu, or ask an officer to add it to the MOTD (message of the day). Have a meeting place that is easy to get to, and relatively safe, e.g. a ToA haven, or Castle Sauvage.
3) Have an idea of what classes you need/will need. If its something that requires a good full group, then make sure you have the essential classes available, such as clerics/pallies etc. Many artefact encounters and ML steps need a different approach that a standard group doesn't provide, e.g. a mob that you have to kill fast will die faster if you have a theurgist there to petspam it to reduce the af, so take this into account when forming a group. If after your initial request for help you get no reply from anyone of these classes, do /gc who and find out who's on. People may be playing alts, or may be afk, or may have lots of chat spam so they may have missed your request - don't be afraid to pm people, and remember which people have alts that are clerics/sorcs/pallies etc
OK, so you've got your group together - you've met at the specified time and place, everyone's in the group, you're all buffed up and ready to go - what happens now?
Because you've got this group together, people will assume you're the leader, and you know what you're doing. Make sure you've read up on what you need to do - lots of good artifact/quest/ML walkthroughs on www.visionofsages.net/toa. Also make sure you have on you what you need - if you're taking a keep, make sure you have rams, also some artifact encounters require rams (Egg of Youth and Spear of Kings), many ML encounters require items from previous encounters etc, so bear this in mind and make sure you have thsese items on you. Also if you're going off into ToA you may need a boat, so again, make sure you have one, or ask someone who is coming to bring one with them - not everyone has skiffs, but most groups will have one within them.
So you've got there in one piece, you're all ready. You need to brief the group - tell them what to do. Lots of ToA mobs have enhanced AI and can do some pretty unexpected things - they won't be unexpected to you as you will have read the walkthrough, but the cleric might not know that the mob has a powerful ae mezz, or the sorc might not know about the gazillions of adds you'll get - tell them beforehand so they can be as prepared as you are.
Off you go, do your killing
What if it goes wrong:
Have a backup plan - have a place to meet if you all get wiped out, and keep people interested - you need to stop them from wanting to log an alt, which is pretty much a natural reaction when it all goes pearshaped. Work out what went wrong, and criticize if you need to, but make sure its constructive. There's no point in going back if you're going to make the same mistakes again, so make sure you've learned from your previous experience, for example - the cleric ran out of power and couldn't heal? Make sure the cleric has power pots on the next run.
Hopefully this should make getting groups together to go RvRing and to get artifacts much much easier
A couple of other points to remember:
Make sure whatever you're about to do is available - make sure the artifact encounter is up, that there are mids in HW, and if you're not sure then tell people that you're not sure, but if there aren't any you'll go to Odin's instead for example.
Make sure you're bound in a suitable location, such as the nearest haven, or somewhere where you can easily port to where you're going. If being rezz sick is a problem for you (e.g. a cleric as you'll have reduced conc while rezz sick) then make sure you bind near a healer. All of the ToA havens are generally a good place to bind if you are in ToA or the frontier zones. If you're in classic, Gothwaite harbour is a great place to bind. If you have a slow computer and you're RvRing, bind in Sauvage - there isn't a healer there, but you can bind right on the pad.
If you're having problems getting people together to do something that is difficult or monotonous, give them an incentive. Most artefact mobs/ML encounters have pretty nice static drops, or at least good RoG drops - remind them of this, or maybe offer to do an artifact they need afterwards, although remember not to get yourself into doing a chain of 8 artefacts if you don't have that much time.
People will remember what you've done in the past and take it into account - if you log immediately after getting your artifact, even though you said you'd help someone else get yours, that's probably the last artifact you'll get help with. If you log an alt after the first wipeout in RvR, you're unlikely to get invited into more RvR groups - to succeed, we need to co-operate.
Damn this is a long post, but any questions post below or give me a yell in game or over pm
1) Have an objective. What do you want to do? RvR? PvE? You need to be specific - say you want to get a group together to get artifact X in XX zone.
2) Have a timescale. Do you know how long this is going to take, or how long you're going to be doing this for? People don't like to commit for unspecified amounts of time, so you're more likely to get people if you say it will take about half an hour, or you want to get an RvR group going for a couple of hours. Don't underestimate how long it takes either - if you tell everyone it will take 10 minutes and it actually takes half an hour you'll annoy people.
3) Set a time and place to do something specific - it gives people online notice that you want to do something, and also informs people that have just logged on what is going on. Either make regular announcements on /gu, or ask an officer to add it to the MOTD (message of the day). Have a meeting place that is easy to get to, and relatively safe, e.g. a ToA haven, or Castle Sauvage.
3) Have an idea of what classes you need/will need. If its something that requires a good full group, then make sure you have the essential classes available, such as clerics/pallies etc. Many artefact encounters and ML steps need a different approach that a standard group doesn't provide, e.g. a mob that you have to kill fast will die faster if you have a theurgist there to petspam it to reduce the af, so take this into account when forming a group. If after your initial request for help you get no reply from anyone of these classes, do /gc who and find out who's on. People may be playing alts, or may be afk, or may have lots of chat spam so they may have missed your request - don't be afraid to pm people, and remember which people have alts that are clerics/sorcs/pallies etc
OK, so you've got your group together - you've met at the specified time and place, everyone's in the group, you're all buffed up and ready to go - what happens now?
Because you've got this group together, people will assume you're the leader, and you know what you're doing. Make sure you've read up on what you need to do - lots of good artifact/quest/ML walkthroughs on www.visionofsages.net/toa. Also make sure you have on you what you need - if you're taking a keep, make sure you have rams, also some artifact encounters require rams (Egg of Youth and Spear of Kings), many ML encounters require items from previous encounters etc, so bear this in mind and make sure you have thsese items on you. Also if you're going off into ToA you may need a boat, so again, make sure you have one, or ask someone who is coming to bring one with them - not everyone has skiffs, but most groups will have one within them.
So you've got there in one piece, you're all ready. You need to brief the group - tell them what to do. Lots of ToA mobs have enhanced AI and can do some pretty unexpected things - they won't be unexpected to you as you will have read the walkthrough, but the cleric might not know that the mob has a powerful ae mezz, or the sorc might not know about the gazillions of adds you'll get - tell them beforehand so they can be as prepared as you are.
Off you go, do your killing
What if it goes wrong:
Have a backup plan - have a place to meet if you all get wiped out, and keep people interested - you need to stop them from wanting to log an alt, which is pretty much a natural reaction when it all goes pearshaped. Work out what went wrong, and criticize if you need to, but make sure its constructive. There's no point in going back if you're going to make the same mistakes again, so make sure you've learned from your previous experience, for example - the cleric ran out of power and couldn't heal? Make sure the cleric has power pots on the next run.
Hopefully this should make getting groups together to go RvRing and to get artifacts much much easier
A couple of other points to remember:
Make sure whatever you're about to do is available - make sure the artifact encounter is up, that there are mids in HW, and if you're not sure then tell people that you're not sure, but if there aren't any you'll go to Odin's instead for example.
Make sure you're bound in a suitable location, such as the nearest haven, or somewhere where you can easily port to where you're going. If being rezz sick is a problem for you (e.g. a cleric as you'll have reduced conc while rezz sick) then make sure you bind near a healer. All of the ToA havens are generally a good place to bind if you are in ToA or the frontier zones. If you're in classic, Gothwaite harbour is a great place to bind. If you have a slow computer and you're RvRing, bind in Sauvage - there isn't a healer there, but you can bind right on the pad.
If you're having problems getting people together to do something that is difficult or monotonous, give them an incentive. Most artefact mobs/ML encounters have pretty nice static drops, or at least good RoG drops - remind them of this, or maybe offer to do an artifact they need afterwards, although remember not to get yourself into doing a chain of 8 artefacts if you don't have that much time.
People will remember what you've done in the past and take it into account - if you log immediately after getting your artifact, even though you said you'd help someone else get yours, that's probably the last artifact you'll get help with. If you log an alt after the first wipeout in RvR, you're unlikely to get invited into more RvR groups - to succeed, we need to co-operate.
Damn this is a long post, but any questions post below or give me a yell in game or over pm